A Perfect Warrior
by Lucien Valdor
Summary: The Ultramarines regard themselves as the Emperor's finest warriors. His chosen sons and his the descendants of the greatest Primarch. But what happens when Sergeant Lucien Corvo's obsession with being the perfect warrior brings him down the path of the Slaanesh? (This is my first fanfiction but reviews and criticism is always as I hope to improve my writing :3 )


+++995.999.M41++++

+++Planet Delandium, Ultima Segmentum++++

+++Hive City Cerberos++++

* * *

The rot had started from the head down. Fifty years ago, Planetary Governor Delvaros XII had come into power after his father, along with much of the planet's nobility was killed during the Praxes Crusade. From the very start of his tenure, his incompetence and outright disrespect for the Imperium was made abundantly clear. He ignored the development of the city and the infrastructure projects in favor of lavish feasts for his political supporters and excessive grants to his small cartel of financial backers. He turned the professional PDF and Imperial Guard regiments based on the planet that his family had spent centuries building up into his private army.

As the years went on, things had only gotten worse for the planet. The bustling Hive Cities were turned into decadent nests of corruption and excess. Imperial Shrines were left desecrated and empty as the population spent every waking moment attending great feasts and parties held by the lords of their Hives who followed the example of the governor. Proud Imperial Guard troopers were turned into bands of armed mobs that carried out extortion rackets for anyone wealthy enough to hire their "services". The spaceports were left almost deserted as commerce dried out completely, the only visitors to their world being strange, masked individuals who came in unregistered transports.

It wasn't until the Munitorum realized that tithes were missing from the world for nearly a decade that they decided to send request an Inquisitor be sent to the planet along with a sizable contingent of Imperial Guard. Two years after the investigative force was sent out, broadcasts were made to the surrounding worlds in the sector from the planet. Pict feeds of the mutilated and desecrated bodies of the Guard and the crucified form of the still-living Inquisitor permeated the through Imperial space, even reaching the borders of Ultramar. Marneus Calgar himself was incensed at such a foul desecration of the Imperium's loyal subjects and decided enough was enough. The Ultramarines Second Company would be deployed.

* * *

 _Cerboros, Undercity_

Lucien's blade glided through the air, the finely crafted Talassarian steel making a whipping noise as it cut through the thick, scented smoke of the room. The weapon sliced into the gorget of the twisted abomination of flesh and ceramite that had, over ten Millenia ago, been a proud warrior of the Emperor's Children. The traitor marine dropped his gilded, ornate sword and slumped onto the floor in a mess of contaminated blood and bile. The Ultramarine continued the arc of the blade through the diseased skin and across the breastplate of another fallen Astartes, gouging through the armor and causing fat chunks of skin to plop onto the ground in front of him.

He heard the bark of a bolter and dodged to one side, the burst of explosive shells shattering the obscene marble statues behind him like glass. Finishing the wounded traitor off, he closed the distance to the armed marine. With three slashes of his powered gladius, he dispatched the heretic and turned his attention to the rest of the room. Two more traitor marines remained in the room revving their chainswords as they backed away towards the decorated plinth at the center protectively. The few mortal cultists left made a loose circle around their masters and raised an assortment of disheveled weapons at the Ultramarine sergeant. The purple perfume wafted in the air, mixing with the scent of spilled blood and ozone.

Lucien let a tight, arrogant smile encompass his face as he leapt into the throng of enemies, his blade a blur of motion as it cleaved through the skin and armor of the mortal cultists. Their strangely pleasured death screams echoed throughout the room in some sort of worship to a dark master as he cut through them. Every sword thrust was artistic and masterful, every parry and dodge measured and graceful. Part of Lucien was lost in the thrall of the moment. The perfume invading his armor through the filters of his vox grille almost made him dizzy as he let the artistry and beauty of his combat take over.

Years of instruction by the finest blade masters of Talassar's nobility washed over him in a wave of nostalgia. He remembered, for a micro-second, how he was groomed from birth by the royal houses of one of Ultramar's most prestigious planets to become a Space Marine. How his acceptance into the Ultramarines caused celebrations in the streets of the Hive City that his original family ruled. As he cleaved a screaming cultist from neck to groin he remembered the fondness...no...the obsession at which he practiced his blade work in the reserve companies, how he had come to the attention of a certain Cato Sicarius who made him sergeant of the 3rd squad in the 2nd Company when Cato became it's Captain in the aftermath of the Tyranid Invasion.

He slipped out of his brief reverie as he realized that the mortals were all dead, lying in a heap of sliced up corpses at his feet. The two remaining traitor marines looked at him in a strange manner. He recognized the hatred and contempt in their eyes but there was something else. They fixated on the red-helmeted Ultramarine, their eyes showing a glimmer of...awe? He didn't waste the momentary distraction of his enemies and lunged towards them without a beat, his blade immediately catching one of them with his chainsword raised. The traitor didn't even have the time to rev up his weapon before Lucien's knee smashed into his groin, his knee plate breaking through the ancient, worn down armor with a loud crack and diving deep into the rotten flesh underneath. The heretic was still screaming when Lucien's blade pushed back his chainsword and plunged into his neck, twisting sideways as it exited his flesh in a spray of polluted liquid that could barely be called blood.

The second traitor revved up his chainsword with a snarl, the sound of such a loud, inelegant weapon offending the sensibilities of the swordsman as he dove into him, hacking, slashing and cleaving until he forced the traitor marine back step by bloody step into the marble plinth, inflicting significant wounds the entire way. Suddenly Lucien felt a surge of energy rush through him and his blade arm shot forward, as if it controlled by an unseen force as he easily dodged the weak riposte by the mortally wounded traitor and impaled the heretic into the plinth, his sword punching through both of the Emperor's Children's hearts and sinking into the black marble of the alter-like structure. The Ultramarine sergeant felt a wash of serenity fill him, a sense of completeness enveloping his mind and body as his armor pumped pain balms into his bloodstream.

He felt this way after every battle. Like he was an artist that had completed a complex drawing or a sculptor that had made the last chink into a perfect statue. He had won the battle and he had won it with grace and poise that his family had demanded as a child and his chapter had demanded as a man. As he pulled his sword free of the plinth, causing the traitor's body to slump down onto the curved floor, Lucien's heart began to swell with pride and the perfume that flooded his nostrils through his helmet strangely enhanced his state of mind.

He was an Ultramarine, a scion of Roboute Guilliman, part of the best chapter of the Adeptus Astartes in the galaxy and a sergeant of the honoured 2nd Company under the brilliant leadership of Cato Sicarius. He was more than a crude tool like the Space Marines of lesser chapters, more than the unorganized rabble that called themselves the Imperial Guard. He was a finely crafted tool of his primarch and his chapter, a truly refined warrior...

"A perfect warrior"

He spun around in an instant, his blade drawn as he heard the voice slither out softly from the plinth. He stared intensely at it from behind his red eye lenses and slowly turned back around. It was probably an illusion of the mind, he thought. Caused by the exhaustion of fighting these mongrels all by himself. The Codex Astartes spoke of such maladies. He cursed the rest of his squad for not being able to keep up with him and sniffed aggressively, pushing out the thick perfume that had begun to clog his nostrils. Behind him a glimmer of purple light flashed for a nanosecond in the crack in the plinth that his sword had made.

"A perfect warrior" the voice echoed in his head, even as he left the shrine to the Dark Prince behind him.


End file.
